What a Small Business Website Needs

Effective Content

Your small business Website content should be relevant to your business. This sounds obvious, but it’s easy for content to get outdated. If your products or services have changed at all, then the site should reflect that.

Home Page Look and Feel

Your visitors should easily be able to tell what your business or organization is. Does the look match your branding and style? Is it appealing enough to make you want to continue on the site?

Goals. What Do Want Visitors To Do?

Buy a product, make a donation, browse through other pages, contact you, fill out a form?

Be sure you have a strong call to action if you want them to go somewhere else. The example to the right has clear calls to action with a call to donate, and to learn more.

Good Images

Imagery can visually enhance a website. I’ve used the clients images as well as stock images like istockphoto.com. Whether you use stock or company images depends on the type of website, and the visitors you expect.

For nonprofit websites, I’ve used stock photos of people and families, that appeal to ones softer side, increasing the chance of eliciting a donation. For construction websites, company photos from their projects were featured, giving a clear view of the company’s work.

SEO

Search engine optimization is about getting good search results when someone is searching for your product or service. This ties into good content since search engines will return results based largely on your website content. Title tags and META descriptions containing important keywords should be on every page, clearly describing the page or post, and should tie in with the pages content.

Targeting and Focus

I’ve found that successful SEO takes time to work. Determine your goals and target keywords for your industry. Analysis of your competition will help to see where you fit in currently, and where you’d like to be in search results. Sometimes it’s a good idea to narrow your focus, and after some success, you can expand your goals.

Other factors are in play including the websites URL, headings and HTML structure. Including a sitemap to your site is also a good idea. Externally you can enhance SEO using social media, google advertising and email marketing, among others.

Analysis

Don’t forget to analyze your website traffic. This will help determine where website visitors are going within your site, when they’re leaving, and what keywords were used to get them to your website.

Responsive Website

Responsive web design will enhance the users experience and keep people on your site longer since your website will display well on smart phones and tablets.

Blog

Having a blog that’s updated regularly will help keep your site fresh which ties into SEO success. Search engines will index your website often if it’s updated regularly. Adding blog posts will keep your customers current with what’s going on, and relevant in search results. (I’ve found blogging to be optional for companies that only need a static online presence.)

Easy To Update

If you can edit a Word document, you’ll be comfortable editing your WordPress website. Most websites we build are with WordPress, which is a great CMS (content management system) and is perfect for blogging. The WordPress administration is easy to use so there’s little excuse not to update your website when needed.

We build custom WordPress themes for clients, and don’t use off-the-shelf templates. WordPress provides the flexibility to add functionality, keep your site secure, and has a strong community of developers which provides a strong foundation.

Web Developer

I’m your ace in the hole when you get into trouble or are confused about your website. I do updates for clients of all abilities, from those that don’t want to spend the time, to those that don’t care to learn the website administration interface. I’ll also make sure your website is updated and secure with the latest software.